Your Presence Is Requested at Suvanto

by Maile Chapman (Graywolf; $23)

A Finnish sanatorium huddled deep in the woods is the setting of this gothic début, a modern reimagining of Euripides’ “The Bacchae.” In the upper ward of the hospital, a group of women suffering from vague ailments—a touch of pyromania here, a physical aversion to one’s husband there—lead a cosseted existence, “excused from all responsibilities save conversation.” Some return every year, to have their pain not alleviated but “cultivated and indulged.” Their cloister is threatened by the arrival of an ambitious surgeon, a specialist, ominously, in hysterectomy, who decries the “holiday resort” atmosphere of the place. Chapman employs the free-floating first-person plural to creepy effect. Despite an unconvincing slide toward horror at the end, the story is genuinely unnerving—particularly its portrait of a stoic American nurse who fears that she has led a life “without anything truly at risk.” ♦

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As the years passed, Tom grew more entrenched in his homelessness. He was absorbed in lofty fantasies and private missions, aware of the basest necessities and the most transcendent abstractions, and almost nothing in between.